In the latest sign that low-skill jobs are doomed to the inevitable, detrimental effects of technological advancements, particularly in era of politicians relentlessly fighting for higher minimum wages, an online grocer in Britain, Ocada, has debuted a prototype of a robotic arm that can pick fruit off an assembly line just like a human worker. Per a report from BBC, the fruit and vegetable picker is part of a five-year, EU-funded collaboration between five European universities and Disney, called Soma (Soft Manipulation).
Currently, all of Ocado’s customer orders are bagged on an assembly line at a warehouse in Andover, Hampshire by 1,000s of human hands. But that may be all about to change as Ocado’s technology looks to combine it’s robotic human hand with computer vision and the ability to actually pick fruit and vegetables according to ripeness.
“People have tried suction cups, robot hands with three fingers… What we are trying to do is to actually mimic the human hand.”
“The gripper is based on air pressure, which controls the movement of the robotic fingers.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jan 31, 2017.
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